Agramon: The Giant of Knob Hill

Agramon was a giant. Not the tallest most famous giant, but definitely a giant. He lived on top of Knob Hill in a beautiful castle built just for him by a family long gone. Knob Hill had its own zip code, a different one than the town at the bottom of the hill. Every afternoon Agramon walked to his mail box at the bottom of the hill and opened it. Nothing was ever in there, but he checked the mail every day before going back home to eat a snack from his peach tree.

Agramon’s peach tree held the sweetest, best tasting fruit on all of Knob Hill. The tree was said to be the biggest, most branchy tree in the whole world. Kids dreamed at night of climbing to the top and swinging from one branch to another all the way to Zanzibar. In the day time, they played pretend games of going from branch to branch collecting the peaches to take home.

One Tuesday in July, Agramon was picking peaches to throw at the town below. This was to keep the townspeople from climbing up the hill to pick peaches. His father had taught him years ago to send some through the air because Agramon thought people would run away in fright if he approached them for any reason now that he was so tall and wide. So Agramon threw the good peaches every Tuesday at noon, unless there was a special parade or festival. He stayed inside his castle on those days so a lot of people would not get scared.

On this Tuesday there was no special parade or festival, but there were a lot of children playing at the town park. The children were very loudly playing a game where one pretended to be Agramon throwing peaches. The others were screaming and running away.

The real Agramon did not want to throw his peaches at the town if it made children scream. He wondered why anyone from the town would want to pretend be like him. It had been years since he listened to anyone from the town at the bottom of Knob Hill where he used to live as a child. He wondered what the kids were saying.

“You big bully!” one was taunting.

“You old mean giant!” cried another.

“Go back to your castle, you huge hermit!”, shouted yet another child.

Tears fell out of Agramon’s eyes and rolled down the hill. Rolling, rolling, rolling down to the town, into the park. A small pond formed in the middle of the playground. The water was all around the tall wide twisty slide. Not up to the knees of any child, but high enough to make a huge splash if a child jumped in. It was perfect for summer time. The kids stopped running away from the pretend Agramon and lined up to get on the tall wide twisty slide.

Agramon did not see what his tears had made. Sad and hurt, he dropped his knapsack filled with peaches and ran up and into his castle. Ba-boom! Boom! Ba-boom! His footsteps shook the ground so hard that seven hundred peaches fell off his famous peach tree and traveled down the hill into town. The children, bakers, and jam makers hurried to gather up all the peaches.

Inside the castle, Agramon stared out a window at the town below. “Those people are so mean! They will never be friends with me. I will stop throwing my peaches at them. They will have to come up the hill and see me if they want just one peach. I will stay out of their way from now on since I am such a burden on the eyes.” The giant’s gaze rested on a pretty house in the town. It was the one he was born in. “It is why this castle was built for me, after all. Who am I to try to do anything nice for those people who don’t want me around? They will think it’s nicer that I stay away.”

So next Tuesday Agramon sat in the soft grass beneath his beautiful world-famous tree. At noon, he lifted one ginormous arm to reach for one super sweet peach. He enjoyed every bit around the pit, and then tossed the peach pit into a garbage can. With every gulp, the giant felt a hurting feeling in his heart. His eyes wanted to cry as he looked down the hill at the children running around the playground pretending to gather the peaches he used to throw. The water would not come out of his eyes so he could cry. He squinted and frowned. “They will not get any more of my tears either. I will not cry.”

The lonely giant did not want to sit under his peach tree anymore so he went back inside the castle. Once inside, he closed the blinds so he would not see outside the castle. This made the rooms darker, but there were a lot of lights in the building.

Another Tuesday came and went, then another, and another. Agramon taught himself how to carve dolls out of wood. Soon he learned how to put pieces of wood together to make moving arms and legs. He liked making dolls that could move because he could pretend they were playing together. The dolls did not care about his peaches. The dolls did not care about the mail he did not receive. They did not care about much of anything at all.

Soon Agramon grew bored with making and playing with dolls. They were very pretty, but they were not very entertaining. “I will learn how to do something that can be done all by myself with no one else,” he said in a whisper to one doll, the newest. “You will all go back onto the shelf for a while. Very sorry. I only made you because I am afraid to go near the town to hear people talking about the peaches.” Or me, he glumly thought inside instead of out.

The reason he whispered inside his own castle was fear. He was afraid if he spoke in a normal tone of voice, that it might be heard by the townspeople. He did not want to scare them or cause them to notice him again. Agramon also decided not to move very quickly anymore so the ground would not shake. Not one ripple would come from him.

Another Tuesday came. At 12:31 in the daytime, Agramon was writing a story about his peaches. They were the best peaches in the world and he was the only one who had one for a snack because all the people who lived near him would not dare to come up the hill and get one themselves. They are too afraid of seeing me, Agramon wrote. They might have to hear me speak. Oh no! Whatever might I say? The giant drew a colorful picture of the tree, and of himself meeting someone from town. The person in the picture was at the very bottom of the hill, covering his ears and looking away. I’m sorry, little townsperson! I cannot make the branches grow down into the town. I am not in charge of nature. But I will let you come up the hill and pick as many peaches as you want.

Before Agramon had time to get sad and not draw the next part of the story, there was a strange sound in the castle. It was musical. It was like nothing Agramon had ever heard in his whole life. It was like chimes in the wind, though much louder.

“A doorbell?” the giant exclaimed, instantly feeling quite scared and a little excited. Agramon thought about hiding in the kitchen where no one would notice him peeking out the window because it was not very close to the front door. Then he remembered that whoever had rung the doorbell knew he was home because his voice was so loud.

“I know you’re home,” a brave voice called from behind the front door. “I have a gift for you, Agramon. Please open the door.”

It took some time for the giant to softly tiptoe to the door, slowly open it, and quietly greet his visitor. The visitor, a short elderly man, smiled.

“Agramon, my wife made some peach jam for you. I have a whole box of peach jam jars. Look, she tied this cloth around the top with the best kind of ribbons. There is a card in the box. It says: ‘Thank you for the peaches, Agramon.’”

Agramon’s cheeks were very pink. He was so happy. Being a giant, he thought he needed to keep his voice down. So he whispered, “Thank you.”

The visitor laughed very loudly. “You’re going to have to speak up, Agramon. I can’t hear you when you whisper.”

“Thank you,” Agramon’s voice boomed while he looked down at the ground. “I love peach jam. It’s been since I was a boy that I’ve had any.” The giant felt sad. “My mother used to make it for me before I came to live in the castle.”

The elderly man looked right up at Agramon’s face and into his eyes. “Your father never meant for you to stay here every day by yourself. He was a good man. He went all over the world with your mother selling your mother’s peach jam. All the money was to take care of your castle.” When Agramon took the box of peach jam and set it down on a table, the visitor added, “Your father gave you a beautiful place strong enough to hold you, a place where you could fit in. He knew how much you loved the peach tree, and he said you seemed to be afraid of the town.”

The giant did not want to talk about being afraid. It made him feel more afraid. It reminded him of the children on the playground pretending they were very afraid of him. Being a giant, he did not want to seem scared, so he said, “I loved the peach tree, but I loved my father and mother even more. When they did not come to see me, I thought they were scared of me like I thought the others would be.”

“No one is afraid of you, Agramon. Well, they were not afraid of you. Now they wonder what is wrong because you do not even throw the peaches anymore. They have kept their distance because your father told them long ago that you are very timid about how loud you can be, how much you can make the ground shake, how tall and wide you are. Remember, we built a special slide for you when you were a boy. We want to be friends with you. Do you want to be friends with us?”

Agramon sat down in the kitchen and invited his visitor to do the same thing. “Why does no one ever come to see me? Why do I have to be the one to go see them?”

“Agramon, are you joking? I am here visiting you right now.”

The giant hoped he did not hurt the feelings of his visitor, but his own heart still hurt. “I can see what you mean. But why do the children pretend to be me on the playground? Why do they say such insulting things about me?”

“Agramon, Agramon. You were so far away from the town, you could not hear anything very clearly. If you would listen more, you would know they always finish the game by telling strangers in the world to be kind to you. They do wonder why you will not visit us. They love the peach jam your mother taught my wife how to make. The whole town considers you a hero.”

Agramon did not believe that. “How could I be a hero? A hero has to do something brave for someone else.”

“Come down the hill with me, Agramon. They will cheer for you. Tell them you will keep giving them peaches. Tell them you are not afraid anymore.”

Agramon started to tiptoe to the door with the visitor, but was told to walk plainly like the giant he is. And he did.

All the way down Knob Hill. All the way into the town at the bottom of the hill. All the way to a plaza in the middle of the town next to the playground. On one side of the plaza was a jam shop. A sign with Agramon’s mother’s and father’s faces was hanging on the front of the shop. In the window was another sign with Agramon painted on it. The sign with Agramon on it said, “Agramon’s Famous Peach Jam”.

Many townspeople had come out of their houses and businesses to see where the giant would go. They saw he was in the plaza and decided to make a festival for him. Agramon celebrated with his new friends. He even took a ride on the wide twisty slide.